Nicole M. Joseph
Associate Professor, Mathematics Education, Department of Teaching and Learning | Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN, UNITED STATES
An expert in the barriers that Black women and girls face in the STEM field and STEM classroom.
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Biography
Nicole M. Joseph is an associate professor with tenure of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University. She is also an associate dean in the Peabody Office of Student Life. She directs the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab (JMEL), an intergenerational lab that focuses on training and mentoring its members on Black Feminist and intersectional epistemological orientations. Using critical perspectives, JMEL produces theoretical and methodological scholarship that challenges hegemonic notions of objectivity to emphasize more humanizing, empowering, and transformative research. Dr. Joseph’s research explores two lines of inquiry, (a) Black women and girls, their identity development, and their experiences in mathematics and (b) gendered anti-blackness, whiteness, white supremacy and how these systems of oppression shape Black girls’ learning, access, underrepresentation, and retention in mathematics across the pipeline. Her scholarship is published in top-tiered journals such as Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, and the Journal of Negro Education. Her latest book with Harvard Education Press is called Making Black Girls Count in Math Education: A Black Feminist Vision of Transformative Teaching. She is also the founder and director of Black Girls Becoming Summer Research Institute, a two-week residential program at Vanderbilt for rising 7th and 8th grade Black girls focused on a holistic STEAM curriculum. Her most recent funded project includes co-designing and validating a measure of mathematics identity that includes intersectionality-barriers and intersectionality-assets. Dr. Joseph designed this measure with adolescent Black girls ages 8-13 and has worked to collaborate with districts to support the mathematics achievement and identity of all Black girls.
Areas of Expertise (13)
Identity Development
White Supremacy
Gifted Education
Gender in Education
K-12 Education
Stem Careers
Black Women and Girls in STEM
Black Women and Girls in Mathematics
Mathematics
Black Girls and Schooling
Racism
Gifted Learners
Institutional Racism
Accomplishments (3)
Charles A. Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (professional)
Leadership Fellow
Charles A. Dana Center Convening at U of Texas Austin (professional)
Equity in Mathematics Pathways
American Education Research Association Scholars of Color Contribution (professional)
Early Career Award
Education (3)
University of Washington: Ph.D.
Pacific Oaks College Northwest: M.A.
Seattle University: B.A.
Links (3)
Selected Media Appearances (7)
Encouraging Black Girls to Bring a Bold Voice to Mathematics
KQED online
2023-01-26
One day, when Nicole M. Joseph was in the third grade, she raised her hand in class to answer a math question. The teacher did not call on her. Her mother happened to be standing outside the door observing the classroom and was unhappy about what she saw. It seemed to her that Nicole, a Black girl, was being ignored by her teacher, a white woman. So she saw to it that her daughter moved to a different class — an advanced class. That little girl went on to study math and economics in college, then became a math teacher and a teacher-coach. Today, Joseph is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University and the director of the Joseph Mathematics Education Research Lab. EdSurge recently talked with Joseph about her new book, “Making Black Girls Count in Math Education.” It shares findings from her research about the experiences Black girls and women have when it comes to math education, and it lays out what she describes as “a Black feminist vision for transformative teaching.”
Girls’ superb verbal skills may contribute to the gender gap in math
NOVA
2019-07-15
“Society still feels like girls are not as smart, or should not be in math,” says Nicole Joseph, a mathematics education expert at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study.
How Black Girls Benefit When Math has Social Interaction and Ways to Learn Together
KQED online
2020-03-09
While these kinds of math experiences could happen to any student, for Black girls, they compound with other biases and barriers to creating an outsider status in the classroom, according to Nicole Joseph, a Vanderbilt University professor who specializes in Black girls’ education. She is also a former math teacher. She said for Black girls, “just being positioned as a mathematical thinker is difficult and very rare in your average public classroom across this country.”
5 Ways Society Sabotages Girls' Interest In Science And Math
Forbes online
2019-06-09
Dr. Nicole Joseph is an Assistant Professor of mathematics and science education at Vanderbilt University. She recently delivered a thought-provoking lecture at the University of Georgia-hosted workshop called "Navigating STEM." Her lecture inspired me to explore five reasons girls avoid entry into STEM-related fields.
Keeping Girls in STEM: 3 Barriers, 3 Solutions
Edutopia online
2019-03-12
Additionally, research “has clearly [indicated] that black girls view themselves as outsiders in mathematics and teachers view them as outsiders,” says Nicole Joseph, assistant professor of mathematics and science education at Vanderbilt University. Joseph points to tracking in math, more common in middle and high school than in the humanities, as a key structure infused with bias that restricts access to rigorous math education for black students.
15 Black Women Who Are Paving The Way In STEM And Breaking Barriers
Essence online
2018-02-13
“There is significant underrepresentation,” says Nicole M. Joseph, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the author of the upcoming book Mathematizing Feminism: Black Girls’ and Women’s Experiences in the P-20 Mathematics Pipelines. “We need to disrupt our own negative experiences that we had in school around mathematics…. We need to tell our girls that they can do math.”
The Sistah Network Support Group at the University of Denver
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education online
2015-03-24
Nicole M. Joseph, an assistant professor in the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver, has developed the Sistah Network, an organization that acts as a support group for Black women graduate students at the university.
Selected Articles (5)
Normalizing Black Girls' Humanity in Mathematics Classrooms
Harvard Educational ReviewNicole M Joseph, Meseret F Hailu, Jamaal Sharif Matthews
2019 In this article, Nicole Joseph, Meseret Hailu, and Jamaal Matthews argue that Black girls' oppression in the United States is largely related to the dehumanization of their personhood, which extends to various institutions, including secondary schools and, especially, mathematics classrooms.
The sistah network: Enhancing the educational and social experiences of Black women in the academy
NASPA Journal About Women in Higher EducationEvette L Allen, Nicole M Joseph
2018 The purpose of this study was to investigate the experiences of women in the Sistah Network, an affinity group at a predominantly White institution, with mentoring goals to enhance the educational and social experiences of Black women in master’s and doctoral programs and their mentors.
A Review of Cases for Mathematics Teacher Educators: Facilitating Conversations About Inequities in Mathematics Classrooms
Journal for Research in Mathematics EducationNicole M Joseph, Christopher C Jett, Jacqueline Leonard
2018 This book review analyzes Cases for Mathematics Teacher Educators: Facilitating Conversations About Inequities in Mathematics Classrooms, edited by Dorothy Y. White, Sandra Crespo, and Marta Civil.
Black women’s and girls’ persistence in the P–20 mathematics pipeline: Two decades of children, youth, and adult education research
Review of Research in EducationNicole M Joseph, Meseret Hailu, Denise Boston
2017 Like other women and girls of color in the U.S. education system, Black1 women and girls negotiate and integrate multiple marginalized identities in mathematics. As such, this integrative review used critical race theory (CRT) and Black feminism as interpretive frames to explore factors that contribute to Black women’s and girls’ persistence in the mathematics pipeline and the role these factors play in shaping their academic outcomes.
Out of the Classroom and Into the City: The Use of Field Trips as an Experiential Learning Tool in Teacher Education
SAGE OpenCara M Djonko-Moore, Nicole M Joseph
2016 This article explores the researcher’s use of field trips as an experiential learning tool in a social studies methods course as a pilot study. The researchers analyzed course evaluations and student reflection papers using document analysis to determine (a) the positive and negative aspects of utilizing field trips during the course, and (b) the ways the field trips advanced or limited pre-service teachers’ learning.
